What''s most important? HCA,IS,SPECS,BS

[Joey007]

A) High HCA Score
B) Awsome Ideal-Scope Image
c) Staying within certian well known performing specs
D) Triple VH on Brilliancescope

Which is most important? How would you rank these in order of importance?

 

[strmrdr]

D is the least important but nice.
The other 3...
if you have C you will almost always have A so thats a tie.
That leaves ideal- scope images which is more usefull for comparing diamonds from the same vendor to one another but some what less useful otherwise due to the differences in how they are taken by the various vendors.
So in the end im going to call it a 3 way tie of A,B, and C.
The reality is that you need to get as much information as possible and treat each as one piece of the puzzle.

For an RB over .25 the info id like for an internet purchase at a min. is:
AGS or GIA cert
full sarin
ideal-scope image
heart photo
arrow photo
inclusion pictures
trusted vendor looking it over
..............
b-scope and isee2 are interesting but I view them as nice but not required.

 

[JohnQuixote]

Strm gives a good assessment.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Date: 12/26/2004 11:18:51 PM
Author:Joey007
A) High HCA Score
B) Awsome Ideal-Scope Image
c) Staying within certian well known performing specs
D) Triple VH on Brilliancescope

Which is most important? How would you rank these in order of importance?

Joey
i think all of thee above +sarin+ Isee2 +AGA cut grade etc,etc...you can never get too much information about a stone .if you talk to vendors that use the high tech machines they will tell you is the greatest since slice bread and the ones that don''t they will tell you the machines is use as a sales pitch. i did get all these information when i brought my stone from GOG.

 

[Regular Guy]

Hard to not see Garry H''s fingerprint lurking in most places on this site.

I think in his answer to Jackson nearby, he put the Idealscope & HCA in some perspective, however, I am an inexperienced user of that tool (I did have a chance to scope my wife''s engagement ring for the first time yesterday, and although I was pleased, would be hard pressed to feel confident to make a buying decision with it, whereas, and in contrast, I do feel more highly confident with respect to my ability to read numbers, and assess whether they are between 0 - 2 or not).

More to the point, though, for those wishing to take advantage of the info available here, and moreover, interested in saving money...taking advantage of the arbitrage you can do when there is disparate info, it is useful to understand where HCA can be high and AGS numbers not so high. For this, read where Gary observes at his HCA site:

"All laboratories that grade cut take the worst scoring feature and assign that score as a cut grade. This ignores the complex interrelationships of facets as light reflects and refracts on its passage through a diamond. Each lab has selected tolerances of varying strictness, but all base the crown and pavilion angles on a range of tolerances applied to Tolkowsky’s design.

The problem is that expressing tolerances as unrelated maximum and minimum values defines orthogonal rectangular zones on a graph. The upper left and lower right of these zones are good combinations for crown and pavilion angles, while the upper right and lower left are poor performing combinations. Standards need to take account of the combined effects of all proportions."

I find the logic of that convincing...both explaining why the crown & pavillion data used generally can be useful, while at the same time, can be optimized, yielding something generally like, if not exactly like, the HCA.

 

[valeria101]

Numbers are ok... but the couple used by the AGS and HCA standards do not describe a diamond in every detail.

If you look at how cut diagrams are described, well, there are many more numbers than table, depth and two angles

And that''s just the recipe for cutting - as close to the finished product as a cooking recipe to the dish! You kind of know what to order from a chef, but the taste is always a bit different for better or worse, and the only way to tell is tasting. For diamonds, "tasting" means direct observation of the stone, not the numbers - something that the ''scopes (Brilliance Scope, Ideal Scope... what not) do. It may take a little work to understand what they mean, but their precision is way better than counting, as far as I understand.

The Ideal Scope says slightly different things than the Brilliance Scope - this is quite obvious for fancy shapes. The Iscope is the only such tool you can use yourself if you are so inclined. The other ''scopes are seller''s privilege

So... from choosing your list of tools... it''s I''scope first and only, just because I can handle the thing myself for a reality check.